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. 2012 Apr 25;7(4):e35963. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035963

Figure 3. Latency and probability of volitional switches.

Figure 3

One observer (LH) was instructed on tone to make a perceptual switch either immediately, or after mentally counting one, two or three seconds. The tone was delivered 1 s into each trial. There were 20×6 s trials for each instructional condition, with data rejected if the first percept was not reported (or if OKN did not commence) prior to the tone. (A) This panel shows the average time it took to switch from the initially dominant, ‘percept A’ to the initially unseen, ‘percept B’ during rivalry between leftward and rightward moving AM gratings. The light bars represent subjective reports and the dark bars represent changes in OKN direction. Error bars denote ±1 s.e. (B) This panel displays the probability of the observer reporting percept B as a function of time and panel (C) displays the probability of OKN ‘pursuit direction B’. The strong match between OKN and subjective traces indicates that LH reported perceptual switches accurately. As it was rare for Percept B to occur prior to the desired time, these results indicate that the tone itself did not trigger perceptual switches, but rather the observer could use willpower to decide when to switch between percepts.